Curious
by hmweasley
Summary: L'Rell, Ash, Voq, and Michael all reflect on their relationships.


**A/N: I have a few things I want to say before anyone reads this. First, it's unedited. I started this as a way to process my own thoughts. It was written while I was watching season two but is mostly based on things I'd been thinking since watching season one. Also, because it's unedited and Discovery is the first Star Trek I've watched in its entirety, I can't guarantee that every detail fits with canon. **

**There's also no dialogue in this. It's basically, I guess, a character study except with three characters. I definitely don't think this is going to be most people's cup of tea. So, proceed with caution.**

**Prompts:**

**Hogwarts Challenges and Assignments**

Seasonal - Flowers: tulip - (theme) curiosity

**Monthly Challenges for All**

Spring Bingo  
Space Address (Prompt): 3B

**Word count: **1,211

* * *

L'Rell found herself lost in her thoughts as she stared into the fire. Ruling over the Klingon Empire took up much of her energy. She couldn't spare more than a few moments each day thinking of Voq. The real Voq that was. Technically, Voq was with her for much of the day, trying to help her maintain her newfound position, but her heart could never fully believe that he was her Voq. She had changed him even more than she had imagined when she'd turned him into Ash Tyler.

A particularly loud crack of the fire pulled her out of her useless pity. She didn't regret what she'd done to Voq. He'd made his sacrifice for the good of the Klingon Empire as had she. It wasn't something she was allowed to regret even if she couldn't entirely escape the grief that came from having made the decision.

Voq had died a warrior's death that all Klingons should have envied. She knew that; she had mourned him. Yet she couldn't quite stop herself from holding onto the shell that had once been her lover. She couldn't stop wanting Ash Tyler to disappear and for Voq to return.

With a sigh, she rose from the hearth and instead took a place at her desk. There were a number of things that needed to be done, but as she scrolled through the list of them, her mind couldn't stop wandering.

Michael Burnham had also been on her mind more than she wanted to admit. Jealousy had never been something L'Rell had imagined herself experiencing, let alone towards a human. It filled her with disgust, but she couldn't shake the curiosity she felt for the woman. Both Voq and Ash Tyler continued to reside in that body. Whoever the man was, he had memories of Voq and L'Rell's love that were just as potent as those of Ash and Michael. But it was Michael who he held onto.

L'Rell clenched her jaw as she scrawled out a quick response to a message from her uncle. It had been she who united the Klingons. She was special; that was a fact. Michael Burnham was apparently more special than she was. The only other possible explanation she could come up with was that human love was stronger than that of Klingons, and that wasn't a premise she could entertain.

* * *

If Ash stared into the fire for long enough, he could pretend that he was back on Earth and camping with his family. It was so easy to believe if he narrowed his focus enough. Of course, he could only hold onto the illusion for a limited time before small details of his his real surroundings came back to him.

Qo'noS wasn't designed for human comfort. While most of the planets within the Federation made at least some effort to be welcoming to visitors, Qo'noS was for Klingons and Klingons alone. Aspects of the planet that Voq found comforting, Ash found to be the opposite. There didn't seem to be a single place on all of Qo'noS where the parts of him that were Ash could entirely relax, even as Voq settled in at home.

The two parts of him were one yet two at the same time. It was hard for Ash himself to explain it even as he experienced it. He wished there were a way for others to peer into his brain; no one would understand otherwise. It shouldn't have been possible to be two such distinct people at the same time. He couldn't even decide how to think of himself in his own head.

It should have been enough to drive him mad. Once, it nearly had. He wasn't sure how he'd made it past that hurdle. It had been with L'Rell's help of course, but that hadn't erased everything. There were still two very different outlooks on the world warring with each other inside of him with the same ferocity as the Federation-Klingon War.

The Klingons around him wanted to know if he was Klingon or if he was human. He wanted to know too, but he had long ago stopped thinking of the answer as an either/or one. He was both. No matter how much he wished for a simpler answer, it would never come.

The more pressing question had to have an answer, and that was about far more trivial matters like love.

Ash and Voq had both held a long list of views about the world, and one by one, he had to decide whose views he now accepted. The hardest one by far, though, was who did he love.

The answer was Michael. The simple way the answer had come to him when everything else was a nightmare to work out had scared him. He loved Michael in the present; he had loved L'Rell in the past. Part of him wished he was more conflicted because perhaps then he would feel less guilt when he looked L'Rell in the eyes and knew she wanted more than he could give her.

L'Rell still believed he was Voq and only Voq deep inside of her. He knew it to be true. Even worse, Michael thought the same.

Neither was right, but he would never have the right words to explain.

* * *

Michael stared up at the ceiling as she let her thoughts wander. Or perhaps 'wander' was the wrong word because her thoughts weren't following along a path filled with different sites; they were preoccupied with one topic—or person—and one person only.

Though she loved Tilly, she was thankful that she had the quarters to herself for the time being. She was having one of those moments where Ash wouldn't leave her thoughts. She had expected them to fade with time, especially with him gone, but that hadn't been the case. In fact, it might have been getting worse in time instead of better.

The man she loved had two people inside of him, and there was no way to change that. She had fallen in love with Ash Tyler, and the hardest part of the situation was that Ash was still there. He was just cohabiting, in the most intimate way possible, with another living being.

Such things shouldn't have been possible, but the Klingon had proven time and again that they could defy the Federation's expectations.

She only wished that Ash could have escaped their extremely experiences. Then again, if he had, she never would have fallen in love with him. For the real Ash Tyler, at least in his truest sense of self, had died before she'd even met him. The thought sent shivers down her spine. She had, in a way, fallen in love with a dead man, but that dead man was real and very much alive. As was the Klingon residing in the same body.

There were a million questions she wanted to ask him, but even if he'd been in front of her, she would have been too scared of the answers to get the words out. It was better that he was off with L'Rell, she kept telling herself. The things she needed to know might only hurt her in the end, and she wasn't sure she could handle more of that.


End file.
